Counting box (boîte de jetons) with counters

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This set of four boxes was intended for the card game Quadrille, a variation on Ombre and Whist and involving bidding, trump suit, and taking tricks. The game called for four players, thereby requiring four boxes, one for each player and for each suit of cards. Each of the four boxes in this set...

This set of four boxes was intended for the card game Quadrille, a variation on Ombre and Whist and involving bidding, trump suit, and taking tricks. The game called for four players, thereby requiring four boxes, one for each player and for each suit of cards. Each of the four boxes in this set is painted a different color--red, green, and yellow--or left in the natural color of the ivory. The lid of each is decorated with a suit of cards on an ivory disk, flanked by allegorical female figures painted en grisaille within roundels and representing the Four Seasons or the Elements. The top disk rotates on a center bronze pin, and a square opening in this disk reveals a number beneath. Painted on the underside of each lid is a pastoral landscape, depicting fishermen at a stream or figures greeting one another on a country path. These landscapes, painted en grisailles and touched with green, derive from Netherlandish engravings, which enjoyed a tremendous vogue in Paris during the third quarter of the 18th century. Inside each box remains the original painted ivory counting chips painted in the same color as the box and in three different shapes and sizes.
Red box (spades): 5 numerical counters (elongated octagons): 4 discs, 14 batons (slender rectangles). White box (hearts): 5 numerical counters, 6 discs, 16 batons. Green box (diamonds): 5 numerical counters, 2 discs, 16 batons. Yellow box (clubs): 4 numerical counters, 5 discs, 14 batons.

Inscription

Inscribed on the interior: "Mariaual le Jeune a Paris fecit"

Provenance

Possibly Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832); after his death, by descent to his great grandson, André Cheronnét-Champollion; after his death, by descent to this son, René Cheronnét-Champollion; after his death, by descent to his wife Stella Champollion-Trafford, Boston, MA; 2002, gift of Stella Champollion-Trafford. (Accession date: April 25, 2001)